Capitalism in the Caribbean - Part 3 (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

The First World War gave the West Indies sugar industry a real fillip, but the slumps which followed caused the sugar owners to amalgamate and look for ways of cutting costs—as always, their first thought was to lower wages. Sugar workers were forced to form trade unions to resist the attempts of the sugar owners to depress their already very low standard of living and in 1935 the sugar workers of Antigua went on strike.

Trade unions had already been formed in other industries, notably the oil industry in Trinidad. Blood was shed during riots in the oilfields in 1937. The Trinidad oilworkers’ union is strong and well-disciplined: a well-planned strike in 1960 forced some notable concessions from the oil companies in the face of a recession in the oil industry.

There were disorders in other islands, and governments soon realised that it was wise to encourage rather than to hinder the formation of trade unions. To meet the challenge, both from their workers and from rival capitalist groups in other parts of the world, West Indian capitalists joined together in strong amalgamations. Thus were formed the various cane-growers associations, the Banana Producers’ Association of Jamaica, the Trinidad and Tobago Co-operative Citrus Growers’ Association, etc.

West Indian leaders on the economic field eventually became political leaders: men like Bradshaw in St. Kitts, Bird in Antigua, Grantley Adams in Barbados, Bustamante and Manley in Jamaica, and Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler (who was behind the 1937 oilfield riots) in Trinidad. Economic struggles, therefore, formed the basis for political struggles, fought mainly on a racial platform with special emphasis on anti-colonialism. These political movements were supported by the utterances of men like Marcus Garvey (a Negro from Jamaica who served his apprenticeship with Booker T. Washington) who eloquently and powerfully advocated during the thirties a Negro “Back to Africa” movement.

Through the energetic action of politicians such as Bustamante, Manley, and Marryshow of Grenada the British Government conceded constitutional reforms, culminating in the formation of the West Indies Federation in 1958. This meant full internal self-government based on universal suffrage in certain islands, the British Government retaining control of defence.

The identification of trade unions with newly emerged governments is fraught with danger for the West Indian working class. During the recent Trinidad elections, for example, one or two quite large trade-unions held demonstration marches in support of Dr. Williams’ Peoples’ National Movement party. It may be. however that West Indian workers are too politically sophisticated to be completely taken in by demagogic politicians to the point of surrendering trade union and political advantages won after so many years of struggle.

The wind of change has blown through the West Indies as it has through the African continent; the eagerness with which the Colonial Office has fanned this wind in the British Caribbean towards the formation of the West Indies Federation indicates that the British ruling class would rather deal with a single West Indian Government than with several. But West Indians have apparently proved to be too nationalistic. In a referendum held towards the end of 1961, Jamaica seceded from the Federation, and thus set off the collapse which quickly followed. Now, a looser federation of eight of the islands, including Barbados and the Leeward and Windward Islands, is in prospect. The present tendency is for unit governments (at least in the British islands and British Guiana) to try to go it alone. Political leaders in the larger islands such as Jamaica and Trinidad, the only really economically viable island in the Federation, are reluctant for sizeable proportions of taxes realised in their islands to be utilised by a Federal Government to assist the poorer, smaller, islands’ economy, when the money could be used in development projects in their own countries.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, whether it be in terms of a host of small units trying to go it alone or of varying degrees of federation, the problems of the West Indian worker wherever he is will be basically the same as those of his fellows in other parts of the world. He is, unfortunately, no more seized with the ideas of Socialism than his counterparts elsewhere, but sooner or later he will find that these ideas are the only ones worth considering in his search for an end to his present poverty and insecurity and for a better and happier future.

Michael La Touche

                                                                               (Concluded)

Capitalism in the Caribbean - Part 2 (1962)

From the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The economy of the West Indies underwent a transformation following the abolition of slavery—from a primitive form of capitalism with many feudal features to full capitalism based on wage labour.

With the loss of its tied labour force, the plantation system of agriculture broke down, and the sugar owners faced quick ruin. It was to prevent this sudden loss of their labourers that the sugar plantocracy in many islands introduced a transitory state between slavery and wage-labour—“apprenticeship”. Under slavery, of course, no wages were paid, the slave being kept by his owner and encouraged to grow his own food. Until the sugar owners could buy the labour-power of the “free'’ workers the ex-slaves were “apprenticed” to the estates. They had to work for their former owners for about three-quarters of the week without pay, and from their earnings for the remaining quarter they were able to buy their “freedom" when their apprenticeship ended.

In their efforts to reduce the cost of producing the sugar the owners were forced to introduce labour-saving machines; this became even more necessary in face of competition from sugar planters in other parts of the world, notably the East Indies and the U.S.A., and the introduction of beet-sugar farming in Europe and the U.S.A. To make matters worse for the West Indian sugar owners the British Government drastically cut the subsidy which it had long paid for West Indian sugar when it became apparent that cheaper sources of sugar were available elsewhere. In addition, West Indian cotton and tobacco were virtually eliminated from the world's markets during the middle of the nineteenth century by improved farming in the southern states of America and Eli Whitney's cotton saw-gin.

To combat the twin capitalist problems of the rising cost of labour-power and the falling price of sugar, the West Indian sugar owners were forced to re-organise their industry; apart from introducing mechanisation, absentee ownership was discouraged, immigration (especially of European skilled artisans) encouraged, and serious attempts were made to build up an adequate, dependable, labour force.

In the islands with a long history of slavery, like Barbados, Antigua, and St. Kitts, there was an adequate supply of labour-power but in fast developing countries with little history of slavery (especially Trinidad and British Guiana) the shortage of labourers was acute. To these two countries, therefore, came regular shiploads of peasants from Madeira and India—indentured labourers who signed contracts or bonds to work on the estates as “free" workers. The workers from Madeira did not measure up to the exacting working conditions on the sugar estates in the tropics, but the Indians were quite at home. These “East Indians" were largely responsible for the agricultural wealth of Trinidad and British Guiana, and now number about half the population of Trinidad.

Although sugar-cane farming is the “monoculture" of the West Indies, other agricultural crops in different islands are important sources of profit for sections of the owning class. The (American) United Fruit Co., of which Elders and Fyffes are a subsidiary company, usually lakes about half of Jamaica's large banana crop. Citrus fruit, coffee, and cocoa are also grown on a considerable scale in certain islands. Grenadian planters enjoy a virtual monopoly of the spice trade in the West Indies.

Timber was, and is, the main industry in British Honduras. Timber, including hard woods, is also grown in Jamaica. Trinidad and British Guiana. The tourist industry, catering mainly for vacationing Americans, has developed considerably especially in Jamaica and is now a major source of profit for hotel and shop keepers; on the Jamaican north coast prices are quoted first in U.S. dollars. Trinidad is unique among the West Indian territories in having two important mineral deposits. The famous Pitch Lake, discovered in Raleigh's day, is the only source of natural asphalt in the world; despite competition from synthetic pitches produced during the refinery of oil. profits of the Trinidad Lake Asphalt Co. still assure a comfortable income for its shareholders.

In addition, oil was found in Trinidad towards the end of the nineteenth century. Although production has increased phenomenally since then, Trinidad's contribution towards the world's total oil production is less than half of one per cent; and because of the unsatisfactory geological formation of the oil-bearing layers, the cost of producing oil in Trinidad is among the highest in the world. However, its geographical position plus its stable government gives its oil industry a special importance in the eyes of British and American capitalists. After the second world war, American capitalism entered the Trinidad oil industry by acquiring a large field and the largest refinery. To prevent further American economic invasion, British Petroleum (half-owned by the British Government on behalf of the British capitalist class) recently took over three “independent" oilfields.

The bauxite industry (in Jamaica and British Guiana) is an important recent addition to West Indian capitalism.

As capitalism improved its methods of production in the Caribbean, so also it improved its methods of administration, to control the growing working class and to assure profits for the owners. In British territories, Crown Colony government superseded the inefficient and self-interested rule of the sugar plantocracy. Crown Colony government which has lasted, with few modifications, until the present time of the “wind of change", was largely responsible for the introduction of organised health services, thereby virtually eliminating the two killing diseases cholera and yellow fever and providing a reasonably fit working class. It also built a greatly improved transport system, the British mode of law-making and enforcement and a rudimentary educational system.

The French islands had always been closely tied to France, the colonial assemblies (which were instituted in 1787) being only advisory in character. Following emancipation, attempts to decentralise the islands' administration were abandoned, and Martinique and Guadeloupe became departments of metropolitan France, which they are today.

The development of capitalism in the larger islands of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico is inextricably bound up with the interests of United States capitalism: capital investment, trading rights, and military bases for the defence of the Panama Canal.

After abolition in the British islands, the British Government pressed for the end of slavery in Cuba, whose sugar was underselling Jamaican sugar. The United States opposed British intervention, and later took the opportunity to gain firm control of Cuban affairs by a decisive and speedy military victory. The excuse for this was the loss of American property in the Cuban civil war of 1895 and the sinking of the American warship Maine in Havana harbour. Although American forces withdrew in 1902, American governors had effectively made Cuba a "friendly" country, and the establishment of the naval base at Guantanamo left no doubts about United States interest in the island.

Despite the oft-stated “principle" of the American State Department in the "self-determination and self-government of small nations”, Cuba has never been free of the intervention of American capitalism, political and military. U.S. naval forces were sent to Cuba in 1912 to protect American property during a Negro revolt, and the U.S. marines were sent in 1917 by President Wilson, also “to protect American lives and property". This touching concern for Cuban affairs apparently paid off. because as a result of the boom in sugar after the first world war a greatly increased concentration of wealth fell into the hands of American capitalists.

The growth of Cuban nationalism brought, first, the dictatorial regime of Machado, then in 1933-4 the left-wing government of Batista. With a history of strong left-wing parties (Cuba is the only country in the Caribbean with a Communist Party of any influence, thought to be a result of Spanish immigration during the 1920's), Cuba was the natural birthplace of Fidel Castro and his followers who seized power in 1958 and have ruled the island since then with all the trappings of a police state.

The Dominican Republic and Haiti have been of minor importance to the United States, both as markets and sources of capital, and any American interference there has been largely because of the islands strategic value. Both states of the island of Hispaniola have developed with dictatorial governments, and are at an uneasy peace with each other. Haiti is economically poor: the country is governed by a mulatto élite and the rest of the population are illiterate Negro peasants. The Dominican Republic, which is largely populated by descendants of Spanish settlers, is richer by virtue of sugar farming and the modest influx of American capital. The dictatorial regime of General Trujillo, which had ruled the country with no pretences of democracy for almost thirty years recently lost its iron control and the Trujillos were deposed. It is still loo early to say whether more democratic institutions for ruling the working-class will emerge; in the meantime the country has been "de-Trujillo-ised ” to the extent of the capital of Ciudad Trujillo being renamed Santo Domingo, the name given it by Columbus.

After centuries of Spanish rule, Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898 by the Treaty of Paris. America wished to gain control of the island (especially the fort of San Juan), not so much for her own use, but to prevent this strategic outpost failing into the hands of rival imperialist gangs. The sugar industry in Puerto Rico attracted American capital, and within a few years three or four American Corporations gained control of the industry and acquired more than half of the land suitable for cane growing. Although nominally American citizens. Puerto Rican workers soon discovered that, despite housing schemes, improved medical services, etc., they extracted little benefit from possessing American passports. It has been estimated that the average per capita income in Puerto Rico is less than one-fourth of that in the United States. In an attempt to relieve unemployment, the Puerto Rican government has encouraged emigration to the U.S.A., where, especially in New York, Puerto Rican immigrants meet similar problems that West Indian immigrants encounter in Great Britain.

No account of American capitalism's interference in the Caribbean would be complete without reference to the military bases in various West Indian islands granted to the United States during the early stages of World War Two by the British Government in return for fifty-odd old destroyers. The destroyers have all gone (some were reported to have sunk on their first Atlantic crossing), but the bases remain. They are a constant source of annoyance to West Indian politicians. especially Dr. Eric Williams. Premier of Trinidad and Tobago, who has apparently dedicated himself to the task of wresting the naval base of Chaguaramas in north-west Trinidad from the American Government.

Michael La Touche

(To be concluded)

SPGB Meetings (1949)

Party News from the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communist slogans for capitalism (1946)

From the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Leading Communist Arthur Horner, like the Jack Horner of old, has stuck his finger into the Trades Union pie, and pulled out a nice fat plum—the post of General Secretary to the National Union of Mineworkers. After the cheers of the C.P.G.B. have subsided, let us see if this appointment benefits the mineworkers, or the mine-owners.

Addressing a mass meeting of miners at Tonypandy, he said :—

“Production needs are so great that the time has come to apply the slogan “ If a man won’t work, neither shall he eat ” (Daily Express, 26/8/46). 

Horner, of course, has learned this brutal slave-driving threat from the source of all Communist inspiration—Soviet Russia, and although this self-same slogan was incorporated in the first Russian Constitution of 1918 for the new “Socialist State,” it is difficult to understand why Horner shall proclaim it in Capitalist Britain, unless it is for the extraction of more surplus-value from the miners. Perhaps he, like the Daily Herald, imagines that Britain is now a “Socialist State” !

This wolf in Marxist clothing continues:—

“The present manpower cannot produce the coal that Britain needs to maintain full employment.”

With unemployment figures growing all round him, this so-called ”leader” of the proletariat dares to suggest that “full employment” is even possible under Capitalism, which demands a constant reserve army of unemployed to act as a lever against the struggles of employed workers, much less that it is actually in existence now.

The next “ gem ” (he certainly “went the whole hog” at Tonypandy !):—

“ A large increase of manpower for the pits is vital if there is to be a rapid restoration of coal exports.”

Instead of telling the miners about Marxism, or Communism, this “revolutionary” is forced, by the very nature of his position as ”Labour Tamer ” in the capitalist circus, to sidetrack and confuse the workers’ minds with that old, old capitalist motto, “ Export or die,” which is so necessary (for the capitalist class) at this stage to beat rival capitalist states in the race to hustle commodities into the markets of the world.

Impressively, Horner juggles with figures containing heaps of 000’s, concluding that :—

“If we can restore the 1939 position . . . we can .. . wipe out the American loan and the burden its commitments represent.”

For these few words of cheer the British Capitalist class (who bear the “burden”) will have cause to thank “Comrade” Horner, and perhaps arrange a knighthood for him—who knows? But the matter should not interest the working class of either America or Britain, whose “burden” under Capitalism has always been that of “ making both ends meet ’’—whose wages represent the cost of keeping them fit for reproducing their work and their class. It is absurd to suggest that the American loan is anything but a business arrangement between the master class of America and Britain, and the millions that Horner quotes are of no interest to the working class of either country.

Speaking of unemployment in Wales (having already talked about “maintaining full employment”), Horner, like a Stalin contemplating a “purge,” says:—

“ The cause of the failure must be traced and ruthlessly eradicated.”

For once we can agree, but as the only answer to the social evils of the day is the abolition of the system of society that Horner is supporting, and the institution of a system based on common ownership of the means of life instead of private or state ownership, the task is left to us Socialists to explain to the miners of Tonypandy and workers, wherever the Socialist message can penetrate, their position in society to-day.

Armed with sound Socialist knowledge, and the will to unite for victory, the working class will achieve its emancipation, in spite of the confusion and disillusion spread by office-seeking Communist opportunists.

Michael La Touche

Hints on Civil Defence (1957)

From the April 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

What are you doing about Civil Defence? Busy sealing your windows with sticky paper, learning how to bandage a cut finger, and how to dig grandma out of the rubble? If so, we’ve got news for you. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ancient history—civil defence methods being taught today are likely to be as effective against future nuclear weapons as stone-age implements would be against tanks.

And what authority have we for taking this rather pessimistic view? None other than Mr. Val Peterson, who is the Federal Administrator of Civil Defence in the United States. His department was set up in 1951, and his conclusions are, therefore, by no means hasty speculation, but the outcome of six years' study of a subject vital to American government policy. According to an article by Mr. Alistair Cooke in the Manchester Guardian (20/2/57) “He (Mr. Peterson) has refused to admit that any plan of civilian defence no matter how grandiose in conception or how faithfully executed, can cope with the destructive power of modern weapons, any more than a teacup can bale out a sinking liner.”

Tut! Tut! We trust that the appropriate authorities over here will give the lie to this defeatist philosophy, even though it comes from such an expert as Mr. Peterson.

Mr. Peterson is pretty gloomy about the protective value of air-raid shelters, even if there will be enough of them left for us poor workers after the needs of service chiefs, cabinet ministers, captains of industry, etc., have been met. To quote Mr. Cooke again: “Mr. Peterson said that if the whole 170 million Americans had air-raid shelters, at least 50 per cent of them would die in a surprise enemy attack.” In the final analysis, he said: “There is no such thing as a nation being prepared for a thermo-nuclear war.”

In an emergency Mr. Peterson’s office would be responsible for dispersing the American government, evacuating the cities, and commandeering transport, utilities, and hospitals. But would we have any warning that an emergency existed before the first hydrogen missiles began to fall like the gentle dew from heaven?

However given three hours’ notice Mr. Peterson thinks that about half the population of the inland cities in the United States could possibly be saved by totally evacuating them. But where could the population of the inland cities of Britain go? There just are not the wide open spaces here as in the U.S., and one or two strategically placed hydrogen bombs. . . but there, it does not do to be too morbid. Unfortunately, according to Mr. Peterson, the inhabitants of coastal cities in the U.S. would not fare so well as the inlanders because of unheralded atomic shellings by submarines suddenly popping up out of the sea: we will suppress any remarks about British seaside resorts in case the good mayors of Brighton and Margate blame us for any decreased attendance of holiday-makers this Summer.

The interest in Soviet air power is misplaced, according to the New York Herald-Tribune (also quoted in Mr. Cooke’s article), because long-range submarines could be used as launching platforms for nuclear missiles having ranges up to 5,000 miles; the great industrial centres deep in the heart of the U.S. “ are within range of this potential terror streaking out of the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico.” Submarines streaking out of the North Sea (long or short range) could deal very effectively with the closely concentrated industrial centres in Britain.

So it looks as though we must abandon the sticky paper those nice shiny tin helmets, etc., and take to the hills. But wait a minute, that awkward Mr. Peterson has objections to that idea as well. To quote Mr. Cooke: “Mr. Peterson thought that, even to rescue half the population, the United States would have to start at once plans for housing most of its city populations underground in the mountain ranges of the East and West. He piled on the misery by warning the committee that even such drastic plans foresaw only an attack by hydrogen weapons. Within a year or two, by 1966 at the latest, he was convinced that the inter-continental ballistic missile, with an atomic or hydrogen warhead, would be the prime weapon. When that was perfected, he said, the Government's recommended plans for evacuation would be 'out the window.' ”

But the worst is yet to come! Mr. Cooke’s stimulating (but rather gloomy article) ends by quoting the New York Journal-American, which has revealed that U.S. military scientists are working on an inter-continental missile with an “anti-matter” warhead that “would make the hydrogen bomb look like a fire cracker.” According to Mr. Cooke “one gramme of 'anti-matter' could trigger a weapon as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb; and the expert guess is that a portable warhead could ’conceivably blow the Soviet Union off the map.' ”

Our rulers tell us that we must have the latest (and therefore most devastating) nuclear weapons because they are “deterrents” to potential aggressors; it is never Britain which is the potential aggressor, but always “the other side.” Of course, the governments of the United States, Russia, France, Germany, etc., are busy telling their own workers the self same story. No government wants war, and yet all are preparing for it.

Socialists know that war is the final arbiter in the bitter struggle between rival capitalist groups. So long as capitalism remains, the threat of war with or without thermo nuclear weapons is ever present, casting a dark and dreadful shadow over the happiness and peace of mind of millions of human beings.

The only effective civil defence measure would be the rapid growth of Socialist knowledge among the workers of the world, so that capitalism may be replaced by socialism, and international rivalry abolished.

One final hint: read our pamphlet The Socialist Party and War (price 1/-). which contains a detailed socialist analysis of the cause of wars: there is more practical advice and cause of optimism contained within its 100 pages than in all the mass of civil defence literature published by governments which at the same time are planning more efficient means of destruction.

Michael La Touche

Schlock, Payola and Gyp Sellers (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in stirring times. Rockets landing on the moon, bigger and more powerful weapons to ensure peace, and scientifically minded and humane world leaders prepared to use these weapons if peace is no longer possible. Capitalist civilisation in the mid-twentieth century has certainly produced a unique morality and given us poor ignorant workers a set of social values very difficult to live down to.

Consider the advertising profession. Is it not one of the most typical of capitalism’s great institutions, and also one of the most necessary processes between the raw material and the commodity we consume? If there was no advertising, how would we know that our very life depended on our using pink toothpaste? In fact, without advertising, how would we know what to eat, drink, wear, inject, smoke, etc.? We would be completely lost.

But now, of course, we have Commercial Television, and can therefore learn all these vital facts while sitting in a state of complete mental relaxation (or even stupor) in a darkened room before the Magic Screen. It puzzles us considerably how our forefathers existed without television, and yet they seemed to bumble along somehow.

Recent investigations show, however, that television is nowadays assuming its rightful place in the home. A survey of 200 homes in a town in Northern England revealed that three homes had bathtubs, six had hot water, four had their own toilets, but 125 had television sets!

Time magazine of 9/11/59 quotes Mr. Walter Lippmann (a famous American critic) as saying that the U.S. laissez-faire policy has turned TV into "the creature, the servant, and indeed the prostitute, of merchandising.”

Mr. Lippmann’s strong words were uttered following disclosures that certain American TV quiz programmes were “fixed." As is only right and proper when a National God is in danger, a minister of religion (and also a participant in the quiz shows) girded his loins and defended his God (Time, 16/11/59). “Most of us have a great deal of larceny in us," drawled the Rev. Charles ("Stony") Jackson of Tullahoma, Tenn. "The fact that I am an ordained minister does not make me a saint.”

If a licensed representative of the Almighty can fall into temptation, is it any wonder that lesser mortals (including children) were persuaded to collaborate in the deceptions of the quiz shows? The same edition of Time reports that “. . . of 150 quiz witnesses who appeared before the New York County grand jury and swore before God (or on their affirmations) to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no less than 100, said District Attorney Frank Hogan, had lied.. . .” Obviously these upright, honest, American citizens had been well trained by their contact with the elevating atmosphere of Commercial Television, which in turn draws inspiration from the worthy sponsors of its programmes.

A former advertising chief of one firm involved in the “fixed quiz show” saga neatly summed up the whole subject when he thought that producers “ were living between the mixed values of show business and advertising, and moral values were lost sight of ” (Time, same issue).

"Moral values” notwithstanding, it is plain that, under the beneficent influence of this great “free enterprise" system of ours, the marketer of commodity A must employ ail means (fair or foul) to beat the marketer of commodity B to the lion’s share of the market. One of the means he employs is to purchase the talents, the "integrity,” the showing time, etc., of TV networks, which, in turn employ all means (fair or foul) to attract audiences for their programmes.

These recent disclosures of some of the mystical practices and rituals of commercial television have been said to "tarnish" that great institution’s "Image." it is all rather as if someone had testified that the Virgin Mary was not really a virgin at all, and that the "miracle cures 'at Lourdes were faked.

Payola

"Everybody has become so suspicious that if you say ‘Oh, my God!’ on television, people think you're being paid off by the Holy Father." (Famous actor quoted in Time, 23/9/59.) Now actors, like other workers, must live. They must pay their agents and their psychiatrists, pay off their former wives, eat, etc. And, to help make both ends meet, it is only natural for them to look out for some “perks’’—such as the rewards they get for mentioning brand names of commodities (or even making indirect references to such commodities) on television programmes. For instance, one famous comedian said, "Look, Mom, no cavities! ” (the slogan ot a certain brand of toothpaste) on a TV show, and another comedian greeted a guest star with, "What’s this you're wearing—My Sin? ’’ This "plug" was reported to have resulted in "payola" to the tune of $1,000.

If it were not for those gentlemen (called "disk jockeys") who play gramophone records on radio and television, how many of us would ever hear or remember the folk music of our day which emanates from such inspired sources as Archer Street in London? Fortunately for us, these wise men are quick to spot the very best records and then see to it that we hear them over the air at frequent intervals. For the record industry is a thriving one, and record companies will pay a lot of money to sell us excellent records of, say, the amatory aspirations of pre-pubertal boys.

No doubt our readers will by now appreciate that disk-jockeys only tend to “ride” (i.e., ‘plug”) these winning records if they are offered some inducement. Some may consider that the mere playing of these musical treasures would be reward enough, but we regret to state that many disk-jockeys in America have been discovered to have accepted monetary rewards or expensive presents. Some of the more influential disk jockeys have financial interests in record companies and even singers; this may possibly also influence their choice of records.

The latest development in this interesting chapter of honesty and “morality” in American show-business is the emergence of a specialised type of “payola" —to wit, “girl payola” American record companies were recently reported to have shipped two aircraft loads of girls to "entertain" disk-jockeys attending a conference in Miami; doubtless the record companies hoped that, inspired by the love of a good woman, a disk-jockey would oblige by playing (repeatedly) the “right” record on his show after the tiring conference was over. Could business ethics and “morality” be better exemplified?

Despite McCarthy-like government investigations most people involved in the “music business” in America would prefer to retain the status quo, “payola" and all. As Time reports: “The last thing most people in this industry want is to clean it up,” admitted one musician, “ It’s too lucrative for too many people.”

Gypping the Sucker

Thanks to the benign influence of modern commercial television, the fairground quack, the huckster, and the pavement confidence-trickster, have been incorporated in those intellectual offerings of the Silver Screen—the “commercials.” American TV audiences have been so saturated with their high-pressure brand of “commercials” that a special device (called a “blab-off” switch), by which the exhortations of the peddler of a commodity may be summarily silenced, is in great demand. The sale of these “blab-off” switches is much deprecated by the sponsors.

But we digress. Despite apparent differences, the fairground huckster and the TV "commercial" are fundamentally similar: there must be, in both cases, the capitalist duality of seller and buyer. As the chairman of the American Federal Trade Commission investigating alleged dishonesty in advertising methods stated (Time, 4/1/60): "In the blunt language of the street . . . the gyp seller depends on the sucker buyer and can't exist without him." Thus the "gyp seller" and the "sucker buyer" take their place alongside other classical dualities—Holmes and Watson, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and capitalist and worker.

Here are some interesting little deceptions practised by American TV "commercials":

 Sticking food particles to a plate before putting it in a dishpan to demonstrate the inferiority of a competitor’s detergent.

  Lacing breakfast cereal with ice cream so that child models will smile with delight at being served the advertiser’s particular brand. 

  Saturating a sponge with a powerful bleach to prove how one cleanser leaves a stained sink sparkling white, while competing brands leave black smudges.

  Filling a coffee pot with hot wine because real coffee tends to photograph like crankcase sludge.

   Icing a bake-it-yourself cake with shaving cream because real icing melts under hot floodlights.

(Time, 4/1/60.)

Even responsible executives in the American advertising hierarchy feel that deception in advertising methods would be difficult to eradicate. Said one (Time, 4/1/60): “Dishonest advertising is here. It is real. And whatever the percentage, the amount is large and is not diminishing.” The same outspoken executive went on to ask: “How can four different cigarettes all be lowest in nicotine, lowest in tars; how can three different headache remedies all work fastest? ” He has us there.

One of the most important principles of our private property society is “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Members or representatives of the owning class pay large sums of money in attempts to capture the market from their rivals, and are not greatly concerned about the methods employed. In other words, the end justifies the means; a philosophy which must inevitably lead to trickery, dishonesty and cynicism.

Those who support the private property system would no doubt argue that advertising, “commercial” TV, “show business" (in. short, the topics we have discussed here) are examples of “freedom,” “democracy," and “incentive" — alleged hallmarks of capitalism.

Socialists would rather argue that capitalism, with its inexorable drive for expanding markets and more profits, is forced to foster cheating, sham values, artificial desires, and inequality (both political and economic), in its blind drive to its goal—the sale of the commodity.

This thumb-nail sketch of the kind of world capitalism has made, with its own peculiarly twisted type of "morality," may help to show why ordinary workers, who would normally never dream of cheating at a card game with friends, are drawn into the sordid deceits of “phoney” quiz shows. It is of particular interest to Socialists because the deceits and trickery of the advertising business are only reflections of much larger deceptions—those of the apologists, politicians, and spokesmen of capitalism. Perhaps by aiming our Socialist dart at one target, we may hit both. '

Michael La Touche

Obituary (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard 

What an ungrateful lot the British workers are! Hardened fighters in the great battle for Immediate Demands have given the best years of their lives furthering the cause of that great fountain of reforms, the Communist Party of Great Britain; nay, have also been so generous as to urge the workers to give their lives not only in international warfare, but also in the streets against the forces of the State. But what do the workers do to show their appreciation of the herculean efforts of their self-appointed leaders? The result of the recent election clearly shows that the British workers overwhelmingly rejected the C.P.G.B. and its crypto-comrades.

Both M.P.s in the previous House of Commons lost their seats, and apart from these two and Harry Pollitt who fought Rhondda East, the remaining 97 Communist Party candidates lost their deposits, very few of them polling 1,000 votes or over.

As was to be expected, the Daily Worker of 25th February, 1950, gives a couple of false reasons for this calamity, in the hope of covering up the truth. Mr. Gallacher is reported as saying:—

  “The workers have not yet seen our point of view that it was necessary to vote Communist in order to ensure a real fight against their enemies."

The point of view of the Communist Party (as published at the time of the election campaign—it has a notorious habit of changing overnight) was all too discernible. A plethora of social reforms ranging from Home Rule for various sections of the British Isles, through the familiar hardy annuals—more wages, houses, schools, trade with Russia, etc., and less armaments, price increases, frozen wages, trade with the United States, etc., to the more exotic items such as banning the atom bomb and a more democratic constitution of the British Army.

But behind the camouflage of all these reforms, promises and vote-catching slogans, the insoluble tie between the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Russian Government stood out in bold relief, and here lies the real cause of the C.P.’s downfall. A working-class not accepting the Socialist solution to world problems, and stiff in support of Capitalism will be most likely to support the “home-grown” section of the capitalist class, and not the interests of some rival group of exploiters abroad. Hence, now that the American and British sections of the world capitalist class find themselves opposed to the imperialist policy of the Russian ruling class, the British workers (who are still nationalist in their outlook, thanks partly to the propaganda of the Communist Party itself) will naturally oppose any organisation which supports Russian capitalism. The popularity of the Communist Party in 1945, which resulted in their obtaining two seats in Parliament, was largely due to the temporary alliance between the United States. Britain and the U.S.S.R. during the war.

The other reason for defeat advanced by the Daily Worker was that the workers voted for the Labour Party rather than the C.P. in order to “ keep the Tories out.” Surely, if the “Communists” were really concerned about keeping out the Tories, they would have refrained from putting forward all those candidates, which, according to their reasoning, might have “split the Left vote,” a heinous crime for all so-called “progressives” to commit, and one, incidentally, of which the S.P.G.B. has often been accused. However, five years of Labour Party administration of Capitalism prompted large numbers of workers to vote Tory in 1950, despite the Daily Worker's glib excuse, in fact, so many workers supported the Tory candidate in West Fife that he topped Mr. Gallacher’s vote by nearly 1,000, the Labour candidate winning the seat which “oor Wullie ” had so stoutly held for the past fifteen years.

It is interesting to note here that in spite of the host of reforms and the vote-catching tricks employed by the “Communist” candidates (i.e., pandering to religious and racial prejudices in certain constituencies), they polled a mere 200 votes each more than the S.P.G.B. candidates in North Paddington and East Ham South. We of the Socialist Party, who stood for the single issue of Socialism, and who eschewed all forms of election stunts and vote-catching slogans and promises of reforms, insisting on socialist knowledge being the pre-requisite for the support of our candidates, have long been chided by the “short-cut boys” of the C.P. as being “impossibilists,” whereas they, the saviours of the workers, would lead them to victory in a flash of lightning. Now it appears that the leaders have moved so fast (in a circle) that they have left their followers behind, and have reappeared at the rear of the political scene.

What are the future prospects for the vanquished “vanguards of the proletariat”? Now that parliamentary representation no longer exists, and the chances of future representation seems remote, the Communist Party may once more advocate armed insurrection as being the only hope for the workers. The cloak-and-dagger element of the C.P. may once more become prominent, organising “parallel illegal machinery,” forming secret cadres, shock battalions and what not, in fact as it were reverting to type, and complying with Bolshevik theory inherited from the terrorism of the Blanquists of nineteenth century Russia.

This policy of bringing the workers out against the armed forces of the State may have sounded feasible in the days of rifles and barricades, but it is recklessly suicidal for the workers nowadays, when the modern State controls such weapons as tanks and flamethrowers. At the congress of the C.P.G.B. held in November, 1929, the Manchester Guardian of 2/12 /1929 reports Harry Pollitt as saying: —

  “Only through social revolution, only through armed insurrection, can the workers gain power."

And now, fresh from the crushing Communist Party defeat in 1950, the same Mr. Pollitt says: —

  “The great issues will be settled not in the arena of this reactionary Parliament, but by the workers’ mass struggle in the factories and the streets." (Daily Worker, 25/2/50.)

This statement may only refer to trade union activity and to street meetings and marches, but on the other hand it may be a hint of further dangerous anti-working-class machinations by the Communist Party.

Whatever the new Party Line will be. we can make two prophecies with confidence: —

1. It will be strictly in conformity with the needs of the Russian capitalist government.
2. It will not present an alternative to the present system of society for the consideration of the working class, but will offer innumerable reforms, as do all the other reform parties, in the hope of attracting support for its policy.

We have always held the view that the “Communists' ” misuse of the word “Socialism" by applying it to state-capitalist Russia has greatly hindered the task of explaining what Socialism really is despite the smokescreen of pseudo-marxian jargon with which they cloak their propaganda, and we have also seen many similar so-called “left-wing" parties perish during the last thirty years (Trotskyites, Independent Labour Party, etc.) due to the sterility of their non-socialist arguments.

The sooner the Communist Party of Great Britain also finally falls from the political scene the better, for the workers will then be rid of an organisation which has been nothing but a millstone round their political necks, and whose policy has helped in no way to remove the cause of the major problems besetting society to-day —i.e., Capitalism and substitute Socialism in its place Only a political party having this object as its aim is worthy of working-class support.

Upon a tombstone of crumbling clay in the political grave where the C.P.G.B. will be unceremoniously interred, the following epitaph, written in the blood of millions of workers may be seen: “Born 1920, Died ?. R.I.P. (Russian Imperial Policy).”

Michael La Touche

Islands in the Doldrums (1962)

From the June 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oil and sunshine 

Keeps the Yankees looking fine: 

Oil and sunshine, 

With a glass of local wine

Oil, sunshine, and Yankees. Perhaps the composer of this recently popular calypso was more interested in the local wine, but he summed up the importance of the West Indies in the modern world neatly enough.

Trinidad’s oil is the most important mineral product of the West Indies. Sunshine and a satisfactory rainfall allow crops (the most important being sugarcane) which form the basis of most of the islands’ economy. Lastly, the American Government keeps a stern, albeit paternal eye on the Caribbean as an important “outpost of democracy” and guardian of the eastern approaches to the Panama Canal.

But what are the West Indies? The term is in fact little more than an abstraction. To British people they mean those collections of islands forming the West Indies Federation. The French refer to les Antilles and mean particularly the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique and French Guiana. Then there are the islands of the Dutch West Indies, the ’‘independent” island of Cuba, the American Virgin Islands, the twin “independent” states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and the American satellite state of Puerto Rico. And what about the neighbouring mainland countries: British Guiana and British Honduras, Dutch Guiana (Surinam), and the Central American states bordering on the Caribbean? Do not their strategic positions and trading potentials label them as parts of the West Indies?

The truth is that the West Indies are a widespread collection of islands (Jamaica and Trinidad are 1,000 miles apart), possibly associated with countries on the South American mainland, with different cultural backgrounds, with people speaking many different languages, and having different economic affiliations to European and American colonial powers.

Little wonder that a succession of fact-finding committees and international committees of experts, have been sorely tried to propound a solution, within the framework of capitalism, for the ills of this economic, cultural, and political hodge-podge. And, as we shall see, problems there certainly are, especially for that section of the West Indian population which must seek an employer in order to live—the working class.

If the West Indies’ future is uncertain and unpromising, at least their past may be described with some accuracy: a past that exemplifies colonial expansion, capitalist accumulation of wealth, and the subjugation of a working class, with all the romance and colour of a Hollywood movie.

Search for Gold

The recorded history of the West Indies starts with their discovery by Columbus at the end of the fifteenth century. Columbus believed, and claimed, that he had found islands off the coast of Eastern Asia—hence the name West “Indies.”

The islands were already inhabited by tribes of aboriginal Indians, the Arawaks and the Caribs. These unfortunate Indians (the only "original” West Indians, despite Negro nationalist propaganda) were either destroyed or subjugated by the European settlers.

Following Columbus' various expeditions, the then strong Spanish crown founded a Spanish empire in the Caribbean and South America. Cuba and Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) were the bases from which forces sailed for the conquest of Mexico, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the lands in South America.

The driving force was the search for gold. More and more Spanish settlers arrived in quest of this, bringing with them the Spanish form, of municipal government (the cabildo), vestiges of which later continued under British rule. They also brought agricultural stock—rice, citrus fruit trees, bananas, and, most important of all, sugar-cane. Local crops were limited, the most important being maize, cassava (bread-stuff), and tobacco.

The search for gold proved fruitless on the whole but in the words of Parry and Sherlock, “The story of sugar is a continuous thread running through the whole history of the West Indies.” Because most of the West Indian islands are hilly and therefore have limited areas of arable land, the only economical crop was found to be one which gave a high yield per acre and a high price; it was mainly

because of these factors that sugar and not cotton became the staple crop. Furthermore, sugar can be grown by unskilled labour and does not exhaust the ground.

The shortage of labour (both skilled and unskilled) to grow, harvest, mill, and process the crop (sugar-cane must be milled and processed soon after harvesting) became a pressing problem for the Spanish land-owners: there were virtually no “free” labourers, very few “forced” labourers, and the Arawaks and Caribs were either extinct or unfitted for life as agricultural labourers. The first batch of Negro slaves from the West Coast of Africa to supply these labour needs were shipped by the Spanish to the West Indies early in the sixteenth century.

The forty-year period of economic and territorial domination of the West Indies by Spain was broken by the outbreak of war with France in 1536, and from that date France, Spain, Holland, and England were in more or less constant conflict over possession of the islands, trade routes, and trading rights. Admirals Drake and Hawkins were the most illustrious of England’s band of official pirates. Unofficial pirates, or buccaneers (the most famous being Captain Morgan), operated with the approval of colonial governors against Spanish settlements and shipping, and were paid by booty.

Islands were captured and re-captured. Barbados was the only island taken by England which never changed hands. Jamaica was taken by the British in the middle of the seventeenth century; this was a great prize, for a contemporary described Jamaica as “lying in the very belly of all commerce.” Trinidad was captured from the Spanish by the French, and by the British from the French in 1797, during the Napoleonic wars. Eventually, mainly because of superior sea power and possession of the only two naval dockyards (Port Royal in Jamaica and English Harbour in Antigua), Britain became the dominant imperialist power in the Caribbean.

The growth of the trade in sugar and the trade in men went hand in hand.

French and English settlers soon discovered that, along with cotton, West Indian tobacco (which was found to be inferior to the Virginian type) were not profitable crops; for reasons already given, and because the demand for it in Europe was growing steadily, sugar became the main crop.

Considerable capital was needed to establish a sugar factory, and a plantation had to be large enough to keep the factory supplied with sugar-cane; it is thus easy to see why the small sugar-cane holdings were soon swallowed up by large estates and why eventually the industry fell into the hands of a few capitalists. Today, for example, all the large estates and ail the factories in Trinidad are owned by Tate and Lyle.

Indentured Labour

There was soon a cry for labour to work the estates and the factories. First of all, indentured (“free") labourers were brought from Europe, with the promise of smallholdings at the end of their contracts (if they lived that long). When virtually all the arable land had been swallowed up by the large estates, the supply of indentured labourers rapidly dwindled. Political prisoners (“Royalists" and Irish) and convicted felons were shipped: these were dubbed “white slaves” by the Negroes and were treated as badly as, if not worse than, the Negro slaves. But these were not enough to satisfy the needs of the profit-hungry sugar owners and so, like the Spanish and Portuguese before them, the French and English planters had to buy slaves, mostly Negroes from the West Coast of Africa.

The slave traders were as anxious to sell their human commodities as the plantation owners were to buy them. By the middle of the seventeenth century a steady stream of slaves was leaving Sierra Leone, the Niger Delta, and the Slave and Ivory Coasts to face disease and death in the overcrowded slave ships, and an uncertain future of back-breaking toil at the hands of the rapacious sugar planters. Barbados had a few hundred Negroes in 1640, but by 1645 there were over 6,000, and in 1685 no less than 46,000.

There were few white sugar owners and overseers to control this rising black tide of resentful, sullen and undisciplined slaves, many of whom came from warlike tribes. Soon isolated uprisings caused severe penalties to be imposed; typical of such repressive acts of legislation was the French Code Noir.

The slave trade was one of the most profitable enterprises of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—for the owners of the slave ships. The death-rate among the crews of the “slavers” was usually about the same as among the slaves they carried. Although the Spanish started the slave trade, eventually four countries (Portugal, Holland, England, and France) gained control. There was much competition between the various powers over the monopoly of such a lucrative business and to put a stop to keen Dutch competition Charles II of England granted a charter to the “Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa” in 1663. This slave-trading organisation later became the Royal Africa Company, about which Parry and Sherlock say: “Several members of the royal family were shareholders in this enterprise, which was to supply the English sugar colonies with 3,000 slaves a year at an average price of £17, or one ton of sugar, per slave. The purchase price in Africa at that time was about £3.”

The first European war to be fought over the West Indies began in 1739 between England, Spain, and France. It was frankly called a “war of trade,” and was dubbed “the war of Jenkin’s ear” after an English sea captain who complained to parliament of Spanish hindrance to his trading activities in the Caribbean. From this time the three powers fought intermittently until the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, and many islands changed hands. For the English ruling class, this was a golden opportunity to cripple French sugar production by destroying both crops and machines and by capturing slaves. This period of imperialist skirmishing (which included the Seven Years’ War) was influenced, to the disadvantage of the English ruling class, by the American war of Independence, which drew English military and naval reserves from the Caribbean.

Plantation System

Despite wars and rumours of wars, however, for the sugar owners in the West Indian islands, the eighteenth century was probably the period of greatest prosperity. But it was also during this peak period of “plantation economy" that the seeds of future economic problems were sown, problems which teams of economic “experts,” government committees, etc., are attempting to solve to this day. The most important defect in the plantation system was monoculture, the growing of one crop. Other features were slavery, absentee ownership (most plantation owners lived in England and left the running of their estates to bailiffs), and the dependence of the traders on markets in the outside world.

To make matters worse, economic problems in the Caribbean have periodically been accentuated by natural disasters (hurricanes, droughts, and epidemic disease, such as cholera and yellow fever), from which some islands have taken years to recover.

However hard the planters tried, they were powerless to prevent their slaves learning about the world outside the slave compounds. It was thus inevitable that at the turn of the nineteenth century “leaders” emerged from, the ranks of the slaves: men who had heard the rallying cry of the French Revolution. “liberty, .equality, and fraternity,” and preached that this slogan should apply to slaves as well as to the plantation owners.

Slave Labour

Unrest and rebellion spread among the slaves and in 1791 the slave population of the northern plain of Saint-Domingue (later to be renamed Haiti) revolted, systematically firing some fields and houses and murdering the white inhabitants. Out of this bloody rising, during which both sides acted with the utmost savagery, arose the first Negro slave leader to prove himself competent both as a military commander and as a politician—Toussaint "L'ouverture.”

Movements for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade had for some years before the uprisings also been gaining strength in liberal circles in Britain. Various governments declared the slave trade illegal between the years 1808-1820 and slavery was abolished in all the West Indian colonies, except the Spanish, by the middle of the nineteenth century.

The erstwhile slaves soon found that they had exchanged one form of slavery for another. As one historian points out, “the Act which abolished slavery did not emancipate the slaves . . . As a social institution slavery disappeared . . . and it came back as a system of industry, the negroes . . . having to work as slaves for so many hours a week.”

Slavery was also a very mixed blessing for the plantation owners. It is true that the owners were reasonably assured of a constant supply of labourers who could not leave the plantations: following “emancipation” many ex-slaves left for more congenial work or to run smallholdings. But slave-labour was not very productive and the slave owners were bound to feed, clothe, and shelter their slaves. Sugar farming is largely seasonal. but the owners could not dispense with their slaves after the crop was harvested and processed as they now can with their wage-workers.

Michael La Touche

[To be concluded]

Branch News (1961)

Party News from the June 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Demonstration For Socialism

They say that the day of the big indoor meeting is over. That working people won't leave the telly for a serious political meeting.

But this was well and truly dispelled by the Party on a day of heavy rain last April, when no fewer than 400 people went to St. Pancras Town Hall for the “ Demonstration for Socialism," the Party's most ambitious meeting for years.

They were attracted by an intensive publicity campaign, embracing (1) a series of leaflet raids on Islington and St. Pancras homes; (2) concentrated displays of striking red and white posters all over London, and (3) advertisements in political journals and local newspapers.

For nearly three hours, the audience heard Comrades Young and May outline the case for Socialism, answer a stream of questions, and reply to a lively discussion in which contributions came mainly from C.N.D. supporters.

Opening, Comrade Young quoted facts and figures exposing the fallacy of the “ You’ve never had it so good ” argument. He showed that workers were relatively worse off to-day than before the war. The gap between the wages of the workers and the wealth they produced had greatly widened.

Following up, Comrade May said the Socialist case was as valid to-day as in 1904—when the Party was founded. Tragically, workers still believed they could solve their problems by voting for reformist parties. They would always remain wage slaves until they voted for an international Socialist society, with no wages, no money, no national slates, and where goods would be produced for human need, not profit..

To Labour and Communist questioners, .Comrade Young said that nationalisation was a form of capitalism. It had nothing in common with Socialism. Neither had the state capitalist system operating in the Soviet Union and other so-called Communist countries.

To C.N.D. and pacifist questioners., Comrade May said the way to abolish war, both nuclear and “conventional" was to abolish the capitalist system that bred it. There could be no guarantee of permanent peace without a world-wide system of common ownership and social equality.

From the chair, Comrade P. Howard said the meeting had been so successful that it would stimulate the Party to organise similar events from time to time. A collection raised more than £25.


May Day

The weather was kind to London's May Day, allowing us to hold an outdoor rally in Hyde Park. Members made the best of some unaccustomed sunshine to notch up some good literature sales.

An interested audience heard the case for Socialism from Comrades Ambridge, D'Arcy. Bryant and Young.

In the evening we followed up with an indoor meeting at Denison House, where Comrades Grant and Baldwin spoke. Comrade Lake was in the chair.


Wembley

Four members of Wembley Branch sold twenty copies of the Socialist Standard in one hour's canvass of the Fratton area of Portsmouth on May 14th. In the afternoon of the same day, they were joined by comrades from Camberwell and Kingston Branches on the front at Southsea, where a meeting was commenced at 3.30 p.m. and continued until almost 8 o'clock, apart from a short tea break. Although it was still fairly early in the season, there was an average audience of about fifty, taking a lively interest and asking many questions.

The previous Monday, Comrade La Touche showed us some colour slides of the West Indies and gave us some useful general information on that area. He is in England for a few weeks' holiday and it was certainly good to see him after a long absence abroad.


Writers' Classes

The last of the writers' classes was held recently and it has been left to members to apply the information given. At least one valuable lesson, which we have all learned. is to look at our own writing with a far more critical eye.


Kelvingrove

Since January the branch has held no less than 16 indoor meetings. The average audience has been 30, with collections of over £1 at each meeting. Nine different speakers took part and there were good questions and lively discussion on nearly every occasion.

Phyllis Howard

Will there be enough to go round? A Dramatic Fragment (1958)

A Short Story from the March 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scene: Speakers’ Corner: 

Time: The present (although basically it could be anytime back to 1904). Socialist speaker addressing audience from platform.

Socialist speaker:  . . . under Socialism, when the means of wealth production and distribution will be common property, all goods will be produced solely to satisfy human needs, and will be freely available to all . . .

Questioner: Rubbish! There wouldn’t be enough to go round.

Socialist speaker: There isn’t enough to go round now because, under capitalism, goods are not produced primarily to satisfy needs, but for sale and profit. A superabundance of any commodity (such as wheat in U.S.A. and Canada) is likely to mean a drastic fall in price and possible ruin for the capitalist; hence production is curtailed and goods even destroyed to keep the price up. Capitalism is not a system of plenty, it is one of organised shortage.

Questioner: But suppose everyone wanted a Rolls Royce car or a yacht under Socialism? You don’t mean to tell me that there would be enough for everyone to have one?

Socialist speaker: It's always yachts and Rolls Royces, never water, wheat, or bricks. Why? Probably because ninety-nine per cent. of workers will never be in a position to own either a Rolls or a yacht; owning these symbols of luxury is a sort of pipe-dream workers indulge in, like winning £75,000 on the “pools.” Rich people don’t waste their time worrying about owning these things—they don’t have to. They may own a Rolls, they may run a yacht, or a magnificent mansion full of servants, but what do a lot of them tell us? Why, that their needs are very simple—they boast of living on orange juice and salads, and ordering their lives like trappist monks. Indeed, some seem only too glad to get away from their Rolls Royces and get about on horse-back. Anyway, why would you want to own a Rolls Royce?

Questioner: Because its the best car in the world, and you yourself said earlier on that only the best would be produced under Socialism.

Socialist speaker: You’ve been reading those classy adverts., I can see! Ignoring for a moment the question of whether Rolls Royces could be turned out like Fords (and there’s no real reason why they could not be), what about owning a car at all? You ask any commercial traveller who spends a large part of his day behind the wheel of a car under modern traffic conditions—I’ll bet he would be only too pleased to wave goodbye to his car for ever, if he could. It’s like the story of the sailor who had spent all his life at sea and was fed up with it: his ambition was to walk inland carrying an oar, and to settle at the first place where someone asked him what it was he was carrying. Luckily people like a change, and not all want the same things.

Questioner: Let’s get back to the point. If goods under Socialism are free, surely people will demand more of everything?

Socialist speaker: Don’t you think that the millions living in poverty throughout the world (especially in places like India and Egypt) should have more?

Questioner: Oh yes, but there are millions of others who are used to better living standards—they would want much more than just having enough rice and a roof over their heads.

Socialist speaker: You mean that in “civilised” countries we are constantly bombarded by advertisements on hoardings, in newspapers, buses, and tube-trains, and on television, all telling us that we must own the commodities they advertise at the risk of social, or even physical, death. You’ll lose your girl-friend if you don’t wash with a certain soap or brush your teeth with the new, pink, toothpaste; and who had heard of “night starvation” before the advertisers told us how it could ruin our career, our marriage, and our life generally? Even in Lambeth the Jones must keep up with the Robinsons; their pram must be as big and shiny, and they, too, must have a T.V. aerial, even if there isn’t a T.V. set at the other end. It is plain that a lot of the “demand” today has been artificially created, and would be non-existent under a sane order of society.

Questioner: But even so, wouldn’t the greedy people take more than their share, after all, it’s only human nature . . . 

Socialist speaker: Human nature! Oh, what terrible crimes have been committed in your name! To answer your question about “greedy" people with a timely example: Christmas is not long past—most workers indulged in a brief orgy as slight compensation for a year’s scrimping and scraping to get along. Houses were stocked up with expensive food and drink—everyone ate their fill, and then? Why, after Boxing Day, turkey became more and more unpopular, and anyone was welcome to the drink. See my point? Take another example—water is vital to life, and it is to all intents and purposes free. But because of this, people don’t go round filling themselves up with water until they burst. Shortages tend to make people scramble for more than they really need—remember the ridiculous rushes at the shops when sweets first came off the ration but were still in short supply? Some people hoarded pounds of sweets, not because they particularly wanted them, but because they were frightened there suddenly wouldn’t be any left. As a matter of fact, there have been recent experiments in American prisons which prove this point—do you read the Sunday Times?

Questioner: I haven’t time to read those big papers—too much in them.

Socialist speaker: In an article about the American penal system in the issue of 8th December, H. Montgomery Hyde, M.P., wrote about this new experiment he had seen working in several prisons he had visited. He noticed stacks of packets of cigarettes to which the inmates were invited to help themselves, free of charge. Mr. Montgomery Hyde wrote: “I was told that this had put an end to the illicit operations of the former “tobacco barons,” and that the amount of smoking had actually declined in consequence.”

Questioner: I don’t see the point of bringing all that in.

Socialist speaker: Don’t you? 1 think we can agree that convicts are less likely to act in a social manner than, say, a group of policemen. . . .

Questioner: Oh! no, we can’t!

Socialist speaker: Well, don’t let’s argue about that. The point is that tobacco is very scarce in most prisons—in fact, most convicts are not allowed any at all. The result of making it freely available was that the men were no longer worried about where their next smoke was coming from: although the cigarettes were free, the convicts apparently smoked less rather than more, as you might have expected them to.

Questioner: Yes, I see your point. But how will we produce enough under Socialism? Who will do the work?

Socialist speaker: Well, that’s another question, and as someone over on this side of the meeting was asking earlier about who would do the “dirty work” under Socialism, perhaps I can deal with both these points together.  . . .

Michael La Touche

Communist Commotion (1957)

From the June 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

“FREE HARICH, SACK HARRY,” painted with true Communist zeal in large white letters on the roadway greeted the faithful as they entered Hammersmith Town Hall over the Easter week-end to receive their annual dose of dogma from the cardinals of King Street, and to indulge in some public confessions of political sins. This slogan was not a rabble-rousing challenge to strike fear into the hearts of Yankee capitalists or warmongering Tories; it was directed not outwards, but inwards, to the heart of the Workers’ Mass Party itself. Harich is the young intellectual imprisoned by the East German government, and guess who Harry is? Yes, none other than Cardinal Harry Pollitt. Alas! we confidently predict that this slogan will have as little effect in altering the status quo as others which have appeared on walls from time to time to enliven the working-class scene have had (e.g., “Hands off Guatemala,” “End Eden’s War,” “Chuck The Tories Out,” etc.). Harry is still there, and so, presumably, is Harich – but in a different place.

The irreverent slogan was, however, a sign of a definite air of revolt which hung over the proceedings, a revolt which, if not quite amounting to “ruthless self-criticism,” was at least an indication of a fairly advanced state of political masochism. Cardinal J. Gollan, the Party secretary, had to announce that 7,000 of the faithful had left the flock during the preceding year: others were all too ready to voice their doubts, especially about the Russian intervention in Hungary. One delegate remarked that in 22 years he had never known a Congress that had such a ‘type of discussion getting down to it.'” (Observer, 21/4/57). The college of cardinals, including Gollan, Matthews, Mahon and Pollitt, struggled manfully with incantations and holy writ to exorcise the devils of heresy.

Representatives of the Labour press were excluded from the conference. Could this be because Mr. Peter Fryer (who resigned from the Daily Worker over the treatment of his reports from Hungary and who was later expelled from the C.P.) was the would-be representative for Tribune?

Hungary

Although the hierarchy’s policy obtained an “overwhelming majority” of votes in its support from the Congress, there were some rather frank things said about the Russian intervention in Hungary. For instance, Mr. J. McLoughlin, the famous Dagenham campanologist, was most vociferous: “Don’t dig your heads in the sand,” he said “and ignore Hungary. Terrible things have happened.” And, he added, in a final fling at the platform, “I want to come to the next Congress and see at least a partially new front bench – not the Dutt-Pollitt-what’s-his-name axis.” (Observer, 21/4/57.) Tut, tut, John. flattery will get you nowhere.

J. McLachlan (Scotland); “The Daily Worker told us that there was black counter-revolution in Hungary, but, in fact, there were popular demonstrations against a bureaucratic regime,” he said. “I agree that these were used by reactionary forces, and I agree that the final intervention by Soviet forces was necessary. But terrible mistakes had been made by the Soviet and Hungarian leaders and we should condemn those mistakes at this ingress.” (Daily Worker, 22/4/57.)

Another outspoken critic was Mr. Brian Behan. “At meeting of the executive,” said Brian Behan, “he had moved an amendment that they should dissociate themselves from the crimes of the Hungarian Communist Party. but this had not been printed in the Daily Worker. He had been told that this was due to a technical error (!) and accepted this, but he believed that his amendment should have been reported to Congress.” (Daily Worker, 20/4/57.) Readers who may be prematurely rejoicing at the thought of free speech pervading the upper layers of the Communist hierarchy will no doubt be saddened to learn that Mr. Behan did not gain a place on the new executive: the above statement, and others we shall be reporting later in this article, may offer slight clues as e cause of his unfortunate political demise.

Mr. Fryer was not permitted to put his case before Congress, but copies of a speech he would have made were distributed. A portion of this speech (reported in the Manchester Guardian of 22/4/57) is most revealing, and is worth reproducing here: “You can cross out my name from the membership list with a stroke of the pen. But you cannot cross out the truth about Hungary with a stroke of the pen. The truth about Hungary is known perfectly well to many of you who will vote for the rejection of my appeal. In the privacy of his office J. R. Campbell (editor of the Daily Worker) speaks of Kadar as a puppet. I am expelled for blazoning abroad what Campbell knows to be the truth.”

The Bomb, and Conscription

Male Communists are capable of making some monumentally fatuous remarks, but it takes a female Communist (Comrade Frances Silcocks, from Yorkshire) to reach the ultimate low in fatuity. After dilating on the struggle of working-class women against the horrors of the H-bomb, this Diana of the barricades said: “Now we are told that the Soviet Union is testing the bomb, and we are asked what we say about that,” she said. “We are opposed to tests in any country, including the Soviet Union. But what is the Soviet Union to do? Is it to sit on the fence until we throw bombs at them and they have none to throw back?” (Daily Worker, 20/4/57.) Certainly not, Comrade Frances, we hero mothers of the Communist Party would consider it an honour and a privilege to be liquidated by a real, class-conscious, Soviet H-bomb.

“There was a short, sharp debate on conscription. By 321 votes to 135 Congress defeated a proposal that the Party should fight to end conscription.” (Daily Worker, 22/4/57.) The ubiquitous Mr. McLoughlin also had some words to say on this subject: “The Tory Government had announced a new policy on conscription, but the Communist Party was still committed to it. Why?” he asked. “Perhaps because the Russians have got conscription.” “Don’t be provocative,” called out a delegate. (Daily Worker, 20/4/57.)

Democracy

The election of the executive committee was democratic in the extreme; 42 members were “recommended” for election, and, would you believe it, “a party spokesman said . . . that there would be 42 members on the new executive.” (Manchester Guardian, 20/4/57.) How convenient! As we mentioned before, careless talk cost Mr. Behan his seat on the band-wagon.

Lest we appear too harsh on the comrades, we should mention that they stage-managed quite a nice little show of “democracy” during the congress. The minority formulation in the draft revised text of The British Road to Socialism relating to “fraternal relations between Socialist Britain and the countries of the British Empire” received a majority of votes over the majority (executive committee) version. However, we defy anyone to show us any fundamental difference between the two drafts as reported on the front page of the Daily Worker of 22/4/57. The debate was, as the immortal bard said, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

A final indication of the degree of democracy which pervaded the congress is that 57 general resolutions submitted by branches were not discussed, and “before delegates had seen them they were asked to agree to remit them to the National Executive, and in the end they did so.” (Manchester Guardian, 23/4/57.)

“Revisionism”

Cardinal Gollan admirably defined this fine old Bolshevik euphemism for criticism of official party policy in his weighty address to his flock (Daily Worker, 20/4/57). “We use the word ‘revisionist’ advisedly, not as a bit of name-calling, but to describe objective tendencies. These were the contributions attacking the essential basis of the Party, democratic centralism and its leading role.” He later said (Daily Worker, 22/4/57): “Lenin and the Bolsheviks had to fight revisionists all their lives.” Exactly; the modern disciples of Pope Lenin have to carry on the good fight – no wonder they don’t have any time to discuss Socialism.

Another outspoken delegate was Professor Hyman Levy, who denied that the loss of 7,000 members was due to “revisionism,” “but to the attitude of the leaders to events in Russia and Eastern Europe.” (Manchester Guardian, 22/4/57.) Professor Levy “challenged his chairman, Mr. Harry Pollitt, to explain his silence about ‘a gangsterism’ in the Soviet Union. How often has Harry Pollitt been told about this? How often has he told people to keep their mouths shut?” Need we add that Professor Levy’s utterances were nowhere reported in the pages of the Daily Worker! Much prominence was, however, given to a “reply” by Andrew Rothstein, a reply deeply embedded in party dogma. (Daily Worker, 23/4/57).

Kerala

The recent coming to power of a “communist” government in the State of Kerala in India received much plaudits from the assembled comrades. Cardinal George Matthews said (Daily Worker, 22/4/57): “The victory of the Communist Party of India in the State of Kerala is a portent of far-reaching political developments which will take place among the teeming millions of India.” No one outside the Communist Party phantasy world, however, will be surprised to learn that business in Kerala continues much as before, on sound capitalist lines, and the revolutionary Communist ministers’ ” deeds and sayings in one single day are too bourgeois for words,” according to Miss Taya Zinkin in the Manchester Guardian (24/4/57). ‘She continues: “The Chief Minister attended Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s prayer meeting yesterday, bought a copy of his book on the Gita (Hinduism’s Bible), and asked for an autograph of India’s walking saint . . . Meanwhile the Health Minister, Mr. R. A. Menon . . . told the Palghat Poor Home Society that the beggar problem must be solved by private institutions because the Government can do very little,” etc.

“The British Road to Socialism”

Some heretic voices were even raised against this blueprint for revolution (1957 version, with all the latest tactical amendments and deletions to match the day-today, struggle. E. & O.E.). A genuine, old-fashioned kind of Bolshevik is T. Connor who “opposed the draft as a revisionist (ouch; that word again) programme, and he was fighting for a return to revolutionary Socialism. He moved an amendment calling for the formation of workers’ councils and councils of action through which power would be seized.” (Daily Worker, 22/4/57.) Cardinal J. R. Campbell rebutted this idea, evocative as it is of sterner, ruder, Bolshevik days. “The amendment put forward by Huyton, suggesting that workers’ councils and councils of action would elect a Socialist Government, proposed to substitute for the pure milk of Marxism the skimmed milk of Trotskyism,” he said. (Laughter). May we remind the reverend Cardinal and all the sheep who laughed so heartily at his witticism, that once upon a time “councils of action,” “workers’ councils,” “united fronts,” etc., were all the rage on the revolutionary front. For instance, a circular issued by the “Red International of Labour Unions” came into our hands (Socialist Standard, March 1923) before the word “Trotskyism” (one of the foulest swear-words in the Communist vocabulary) was invented. This circular advocated the concentration of “all available strength” by the formation of “councils of action through the medium of conference composed of delegates from trades councils, trade union branches, and district committees, working class local and national political organisations, unemployed organisations, co-operative societies and guilds.” Stick that in your milk and skim it, Campbell. Cardinal Campbell opposed the nationalisation of certain types of land, not because it is not Socialism, but because “it would also lead to endless complications pushing masses of people on to the wrong side of the class struggle.” (Daily Worker, 22/4/57). Yes, but which side? With true revolutionary zeal the good Cardinal also opposed the policy of “no compensation,” because it “would alarm those we are seeking to neutralise, would create the maximum opposition and make most difficult a peaceful transition.”

To prove that the female of the Communist species is more deadly than the male, Mrs. Gwen Shield moved an amendment to reject the draft’s proposal to compensate former owners of nationalised industries. “She wanted them to get only the opportunity to work and when prevented by physical incapacity to get National Insurance benefits.” (Daily Worker, 22/4/57). Good news for all you capitalists!

What of the Future?

Thousands of members have left the Communist Party during the past year, and many more may do so after this year’s conference, which has conclusively proved the party hierarchy’s refusal to budge one inch from its rigid pro-Russian line. But the “hard core” will carry on, for, in Cardinal Pollitt’s own words, “We all owe everything to the party, whatever we do and whatever our job” (Daily Worker, 23/4/57).

Professor Levy summed up the Communist Party’s political influence thus: “The working class of this country have constantly rejected the Communist Party,” he said. “You keep on talking as if you were the leading group.” (Manchester Guardian, 22/4/57). Whatever future party line the diehards adopt in following the tortuous changes in the policy of the Russian ruling class, it will inevitably be anti-working-class and anti-Socialist. The Communist Party’s past history has been a chapter of misrepresentation, trickery, deceit and humbug. Its future is likely to be no different.

Michael La Touche